January 18: Playing with this new camera . . .
Read MoreWe arrived back at our hotel and spent some time wandering around the beach and pool area. I took advantage of the darkness to play with this new camera and see what I could accomplish. Keep in mind that I am a "picture-taker," and by no means a "photographer." So everything I'm doing here is a complete guess based on the limited and fragmented knowledge I have. I took the photo above using a 10 second exposure with no flash. The hardest part of this was keeping the camera still for 10 seconds. But the result was surprising to me.
The photo above was taken with the same settings as the previous photo, (0.1 seconds, ISO 6400). The difference between this photo and the previous photo is that the camera bumped the aperture f/4 to f/4.5.
My limited understanding of this is that a higher aperture allows less light to reach the sensor, which results in a darker photo. Aperture also seems to be affected by the amount of zoom applied, (i.e. less zoom = lower f-number = brighter picture). I added some zoom, which resulted in a higher f-number and a darker picture.